Actress from Orange gets a break on 'Smash'

Krysta Rodriguez, who grew up in Orange before moving to New York City for a career on Broadway, is seen here in the role of Ana Vargas, her regular character on the NBC series "Smash." ERIC LIEBOWITZ/NBC

'Smash'

When: 10 tonight, then 9 p.m. Saturdays starting April 6

Channel: NBC

When Krysta Rodriguez landed a role as a series regular on "Smash" this season, in many ways it wasn't that big of a leap for her to make: Since moving to New York City after high school, the 28-year-old actress from Orange has worked regularly in musical theater on Broadway, the very world in which the NBC series is set.

"That was one of the great things about it," says Rodriguez, who plays Ana Vargas, the roommate of Katharine McPhee's character Karen Cartwright, on the show. "It was a very easy transition.

"I was basically doing what I had been doing for people for the camera now – it's still musical theater."

And it's always been musical theater for Rodriguez.

When she was 5, her mother took her to a production of "Annie" at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, seats in the second row, and the little girl was mesmerized.

A year later on a vacation in New York City, her family bought last-minute tickets to "Fiddler on the Roof" and despite her embarrassment over her tourist outfit – "I was wearing shorts and tennis shoes and all the other girls were wearing big frilly dresses," she says – once the lights went down, the only thing that mattered was the magic before her on the stage.

She did children's theater and dance recitals in Orange County, and after realizing at 12 that you could actually make a career of this wonderful work, she wanted nothing else. She attended the Orange County High School of the Arts, two years in Los Alamitos and then two at its current location in Santa Ana. After graduating, she left for New York University, studying in the theater department on campus and looking for work in theaters off-campus, too.

"I started auditioning pretty much right away," Rodriguez says. "Just to get my feet wet and learn."

As a sophomore she landed a part in a workshop production of "Good Vibrations," a musical based on the music of the Beach Boys, and stayed with it when it moved to Broadway, playing a swing role that required her to learn nine parts and be ready to play any one of them at any moment.

"I understudied the two leads and went on as both of them," she says of her Broadway debut when she was 19.

After her sophomore year she left college because the professional opportunities kept coming, including parts in the original Broadway casts of "In the Heights" and "Spring Awakening."

Then, while still performing in "In the Heights," Rodriguez started a long series of auditions and workshops that led to her first lead role in a Broadway musical, playing the original Wednesday Addams in "The Addams Family" with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as her onstage parents.

"It's a rare thing and it's the holy grail of musical theater performing to get to create something from the ground up," Rodriguez says.

After two-and-a-half years developing the show and performing it on Broadway, Rodriguez left "The Addams Family" when she was cast in a sitcom pilot that ended up not moving forward. Last summer, after returning to New York City from Los Angeles, she landed an audition for one of the new characters added to "Smash" for its second season, and three days later, on a Wednesday, she got a call telling her the part of Ana was hers, and, by the way, you start work Monday.

"I didn't even really have time to process it," she says. "It was a very surreal experience."

Krysta Rodriguez, who grew up in Orange before moving to New York City for a career on Broadway, is seen here in the role of Ana Vargas, her regular character on the NBC series "Smash." ERIC LIEBOWITZ/NBC
Krysta Rodriguez graduated from the Orange County High School of the Arts in 2002 and then moved to New York City to attend New York University. PATRICK RANDAK/NBC
Krysta Rodriguez, left, joined "Smash" for its second season, playing the role of Ana, who is roommate to star Katharine McPhee's character Karen, right. WILL HART/NBC
In the episode of "Smash" that airs Tuesday, April 2, Krysta Rodriguez's character Ana gets to do a big production number as seen here in this shot. WILL HART/NBC
The second season cast of NBC's "Smash" includes, left to right: Megan Hilty as Ivy Lynn, Anjelica Huston as Eileen Rand, Jennifer Hudson as Veronica Moore, Jack Davenport as Derek Wills, Debra Messing as Julia Houston, Christian Borle as Tom Levitt, Krysta Rodriguez as Ana Vargas, Leslie Odom Jr as Sam Strickland, Andy Mientus as Kyle Bishop, Katharine McPhee as Karen Cartwright, and Jeremy Jordan as Jimmy Collins. MARK SELIGER/NBC
During an episode of "Smash" a few weeks back Krysta Rodriguez's character Ana jumped on the bar counter to belt out Beyonce's song "If I Were A Boy." WILL HART/NBC

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